Are permissive, urban enclaves like San Francisco and New York genuinely liberatory? Throughout history, the aristocratic classes have frequently enjoyed splendor, luxury, bodily enjoyments, and, at many times and in many places, downright debauchery. In many ways, these uncritical and exploitative hedonisms have inspired the condemnation of the middle and lower classes, in the form of religious and other principled attacks on the glaring, hypocritical behaviors of society’s most powerful. In fact, much of the episodic puritanical intervention that our society has experienced throughout the ages has been a backlash against aristocratic hedonism built upon and paid for by the suffering of the lower classes. This discussion examines the relationship between scarcity, power, the concentration of enjoyment, and ‘ressentiment,’ exploring the ways in which top-down imposition of ascetic order has frequently backfired by becoming a universal moral standard expected of all (and not just the working classes). What does it mean to be in an era of unprecedented overall wealth, and how might redistribution of both material comfort and permissivity lead to a genuinely ethical mode of hedonistic pleasure for all?

Critical Hedonism(s) is a social-intellectual project dedicated to redefining the ways that care and pleasure circulate and get expressed, integrating critical, analytical thought with experimentation and exploration. More here: http://www.criticalhedonisms.com/